Herpetofauna of protected areas in the Caatinga II: Serra da Capivara National Park, Piauí, Brazil

Lucas Cavalcanti; Nicolás Pelegrin; Taís Costa; Guarino Colli; Derek Tucker; Gabriel Costa; Cristiane Palmeira; Frederico França; Ana Soares; Daniel Mesquita; Adrian Garda

doi:10.15560/10.1.18

Check List 10(1): 18-27, doi: 10.15560/10.1.18

Herpetofauna of protected areas in the Caatinga II: Serra da Capivara National Park, Piauí, Brazil

Lucas Barbosa de Queiroga Cavalcanti^‡, Taís Borges Costa^‡, Guarino Rinaldi Colli^§, Gabriel Corrêa Costa^|, Frederico Gustavo Rodrigues França^‡, Daniel Oliveira Mesquita^‡, Cristiane Nikely Silva Palmeira^¶, Nicolás Pelegrin^#, Ana Hermínia Bello Soares^§, Derek B. Tucker^¤, Adrian Antonio Garda^|

‡ Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brazil§ Universidade de Brasília, Brazil| Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil¶ Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Brazil# Instituto de Diversidad y Ecología Animal, Argentina¤ Brigham Young University, United States of America

Corresponding author: Lucas Cavalcanti ( lucasfwb89@gmail.com )

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Cavalcanti L, Pelegrin N, Costa T, Colli G, Tucker D, Costa G, Palmeira C, França F, Soares A, Mesquita D, Garda A (2014) Herpetofauna of protected areas in the Caatinga II: Serra da Capivara National Park, Piauí, Brazil. Check List 10(1): 18-27. https://doi.org/10.15560/10.1.18

Abstract

We provide a list of amphibians, lizards, chelonians, and snakes collected during a 30-day expedition to the Serra da Capivara National Park, Piauí State, Brazil. Thirty-seven pitfall trap arrays composed of 4 buckets each, along with glue traps, funnel traps, and haphazard searches, were used to sample the herpetofaunal diversity. We recorded 17 species of lizards, 1 caecilian, 1 chelonian, 7 frogs, and 11 snakes. Rarefaction curves suggest that local biodiversity is still underestimated. An atypical drought during the period of study may have contributed to lower captures of certain groups, especially amphibians and snakes. The presence of water-dependent and forest-dependent species within local canyons (“Boqueirões”) suggests that these areas harbor faunas associated with relictual rainforest fragments and need to be better studied and managed accordingly.

Keywords

herptofauna; conservation; inventory